Day Two Notes

(British police became known as bobbies or peelers because of Robert Peel who started the police force.)
British maintain lead in industry until they get outstripped. Have second industrial revolution to take back lead.
Great reform act of 1832(representation of the people act 1832) came about because people were complaining about lack of representation. At the time five people controlled over 50% of the votes in parliament. After the peterloo massacre and its ensuing chaos died down, Lord Liverpool the prime minister passes away. The new PM is Lord Grey. During the whole Napoleonic area the mindset of Europe was very conservative. No social issues were brought up. After that more reforms could be passed through.
Sir Robert Peel who created the first professional police force in Europe sets about to work on prison and insane asylum reform.
Nobody wants to work on election reform because it benefits the powerful. The whims of different monarchs had highly screwed up the voting system. Some cities had no votes while some empty land had votes. Voters had to pass property requirements as well as who could run for parliament. After many years of Labor keeping its head down and helping through the wars they start to get fed up.
658 members in the House of Commons, 513 were English or Welsh. The rest made up mostly from Scotland some from Ireland.
The Tudors franchised 70 burroughs, later monarchs disenfranchised 30 of those. The whole system was a mess.
The Duke of Norfolk owned 11 seats.
The torries led by wellington saw that a rigid unchanging system was more open to revolution. Decided that it should change a bit.
When King George IV died parliament was dissolved.
The new parliament was a battle between the torries and whigs.
The torries won election but Wellington told the people he wouldn’t change anything. His party revolted and Wellington was relieved of his Prime Ministership. Lord Grey came to power as a reformer.
The first reform bill would disenfranchise 60 small burroughs and cut the power of 46 more. These new seats were to be spread out to real areas. On the second vote of the bill, a record 608 members showed up. The vote passed 304-303. The speaker couldn’t vote. Parliamentarians stonewalled the bill.
Lord Grey asked the King to disband parliament again. He did and a new election was held. An overwhelming Whig majority took over. Lord Grey was prime minister again. The reform bill was reintroduced and finally passed with a majority. However, it now went to the House of Lords. They were mostly conservative Torries. They hated the bill, but it had great popular support. People hoped that many Torries wouldn’t vote against the people. The torries voted against the bill anyway. It lost by 41 votes. When the Lords rejected the bill, the people went crazy. Rioting spread in derby and Nottingham. Nottingham castle was set on fire. Disparate political groups formed the National Political Union. The government said they were illegal. The union persisted but tried to work with the govt to stop violence.
The whigs immediately voted confidence in Lord Grey and his Prime Ministership. They asked the king to make parliament take a break. He did and a while later they brought the bill again. This was called Prorogueing.
The whigs compromised and changed the bill a little. They took out the part where parliament seats would be lost. The opposition did all they could to stop it. The bill passed the House of Commons again, this time by a larger majority. The bill goes to the House of Lords, they use amendments to try to change and kill the bill. Lord Grey and his whigs decide they need to get more whigs voted to the House of Lords. Only the king could appoint people to the House of Lords. William doesn’t want to do that. So Lord Grey resigns in protest. The king turns to Wellington, whose extreme views usually lost him the majority. Wellington couldn’t get the majority. The King turns back to Lord Grey and agrees to appoint more people to the House of Lords. However, the king secretly writes a letter to the Torries and tells them to wake the hell up and pass the bill to avoid revolution or worse getting whigs in the House of Lords. The Torries see the writing on the wall and finally abstain on the vote. This lets the bill pass and the King doesn’t have to put more Whigs into the House of Lords. The Bill became law.
The reform bill was a big step in the right direction. In total the act disenfranchised 143 and brought in another 135 seats in England and Wales. The extra eight were spread out to areas to up their existing numbers. The act also extended the franchise, so more people could vote. This was believed to have extended the franchise by half a million. This almost doubled the number of voters.
The act also instituted voter registration, set up a court for voting disputes, limited voting to two days, and set up multiple voting places in counties.
Scottish and Irish reform acts shuffled the available seats in those countries. 8 in Scotland and 5 in Ireland.
Bribery and corruption were still in place. Despite the reforms the “good old boy” network was still in place. The same men were still being voted in.
Most of the rotten boroughs that were disenfranchised were in torrie hands. This raised the power of the whigs slightly.
The great reform bill was limited mostly to the middle class.

-The Catholic Emancipation Act-
Parliament passed the Act of Union in 1800. This brought all four nations under one banner. Now that Ireland was in Britain they would need representation. There was a large representation of Irish in the Brit army.
Daniel O’Connell started a campaign to repeal the act of union unless catholics were emancipated. He was elected to parliament in Clare even though he as a catholic was unable to take his seat.
The Irish situation found strange allies in Wellington and Peele. The two worked on fixing the problem of Catholic Emancipation.
Catholic Emancipation act of 1829. Removed restrictions on voting for catholics. However, they raised the bar for who could vote. They had to own or rent property of ten pounds.
This also didn’t let the Catholics out of the mandatory 10% tithe for the Church of England.
The aftermath of the great reform bill is seen in the group called the Chartists.
They brought out the People’s Charter.
Peak of power from 1838-1848 or abouts. They set up Workers Unions for the disenfranchised workers.
They were supported by approximately 120 newspapers. The people’s charter of 1838 was a list of six requests that workers wanted from parliament.
1- Universal male suffrage for men over 21 of sound mind and not in jail
2- Secret ballots
3- No property qualification to hold office in the House of Commons
4- Wanted members of parliament to be paid (at this point it was not a paid position)
5- Equal constituencies (every member of parliament represented the same amount of people, everything would be divided up equally) ((This would shift national power from the country estates to the cities))
6- Annual Parliaments- A new parliament vote every year (This would help check bribery) ((At this point a parliament member held power for up to seven years at a time))

The radicals didn’t support it because it was too moderate, the conservatives didn’t support it because it was too radical. The charter however had mass popular support.
A vast crowd gathered in Lancashire to support the bill. The chartists set up a committee to gather signatures to show the support of the bill. The leaders of the chartists take great pains to show the govt how peaceful and law abiding they are. However, soon the group is infiltrated by radicals who try to subvert it.
The group sends the charter to Parliament with a million signatures. Parliament refuses to look at it.
The workers became violent again. Rumors of a Military uprising spread around.
The Newport rising, at the westgate hotel, the chartists tried to revolt but were put down.
In 1842 the chartists tried again this time with over 3 million signatures. Once again Parliament refused to read the charter. Workers went on strike in 14 English and 8 Scottish counties. It only lasted a few days. The chartist leaders were arrested along with many others. The lower ranks were jailed or transported. The leaders mostly weren’t convicted.
Some members of the Church of England got involved with the chartists, some didn’t.
Revolutions were spreading across Europe. The British govt was getting worried. In 1849 the Chartists set up a new convention. Anywhere from 15-300,000 people showed up (depending on who you listened to) The chartists promised the govt that it would be peaceful.
The Govt deputized 100,000 special constables and the Army came prepared. The Chartists had a peaceful meeting and went home. In other areas of the country chartists did revolt but just in riots.
Parliament passed new laws banning large meetings. The chartists decided to revolt but it didn’t work. The last meeting of the Chartists was in 1848. Other groups took their momentum and were able to do more.
Of the six demands the Chartists made the only one not passed by the end of the 19th century was the annual parliament.